One part of the alleged scheme, he said, was pretending that cans it had picked up from commercial and residential customers had actually been turned in to its recycling center; the state often provides bigger reimbursements when materials are acquired that way.

Here we have scavengers picking through municipal recycling bins to find redeemable cans and bottles. Technically that might be theft; it is in some jurisdictions. The effort of returning cans is worth more than 5 cents to anybody with a good job, so they go into the trash.

State officials say recycling centers in California are required to take reasonable precautions: They are not allowed, for instance, to buy more than 500 pounds of aluminum or 2,500 pounds of glass from any one person in any given day

Seems like you could cut the fraud back significantly by simply reducing that to 50 lbs/day. Even Drew doesn't generate 50 lbs of empty Heineken cans in a week.

I used to play that scam when I lived in Michigan many years ago. Back then, it was a dime per can or bottle. I'd gather them up when I visited family in Chicago, and net a few buck bringing them back home. But then the grocery store went to automatic machines, and would reject containers with the wrong bar code, or brands they didn't sell.

The state of Michigan still made millions off unclaimed deposits, but I couldn't return Old Style cans in Ann Arbor.

Employees were so lazy at the Lincoln City, OR Safeway that all you would have to do is throw your bag of empty cans in a bin in the back room and tell them how much you had. I always had 15.00 more than I thought I had, imagine that!

fusillade762:Bathia_Mapes: Meh. Oregon passed the Bottle Bill in 1971. Most stores have bottle return centers nowadays and you must redeem the deposit chit the machine dispenses the same day and at the same store.

Yeah, I was thinking "Good luck processing a semi trailer full of cans and bottles with one of these"

[insidescoopsf.sfgate.com image 600x448]

But I'm guessing CA doesn't make you do it yourself.

Actually those are the best places to go, as you get 100% of your deposit. Problem is they're broken or permanently camped by homeless. The recycling centers weigh the bag and give you based on weight, which isn't accurate for obvious reasons, plus they take a cut.

Nebraska has no deposit on cans/bottles. Iowa does. The cans you buy in NE don't have the deposit label on them either.

When I used to buy my soda at the base, it always has a label with the deposit info on it. You could buy (save) cans from the base in Nebraska and return them to Iowa and earn money, not a lot, but money.

Further more, they had machines that simply counted cans that were inserted. It didn't care whether or not there was any info about deposits on the cans themselves.

FTA: "Just over 8.5 billion recyclable cans were sold in California last year. The number redeemed for a nickel under California's recycling law: 8.3 billion."

Waitasec here - Now, I realize they want to encourage recycling in California. But they get a farking nickle for every one of those cans. So the problem here has nothing to do with "fraud", so much as "we hoped, like every scammy rebate offer ever, to actually make money off morons not getting their money back".

Can you hear the violins?

/ Yes, the next paragraph talks about a 104% rate on plastic, admittedly a problem, but up to 100%, you don't get to biatch, revenue-whores. Recycling affects the whole world, not just your corner of it.

I lived in Michigan in 1979 and they had a law like this. They were smart enough that they also passed a law requiring that all cans sold in Michigan had that fact prominently displayed on the can. Poor California, maybe you should smarten up. Then again, you DID elect ARNOLD to be your governator.

When I was a kid in Michigan I would bring my wagon to the park and collect bottles/cans on Sunday nights. 10 to 15$ a week is pretty good for an 8yr old. When I first moved to NC it was shocking to see people just throw out bottles. All I could think about was how much they'd be worth if the bottles were returned.

To solve the problem of out of state people inflating numbers, just adjust the payout on cans to reflect market value. If people still want to drive across the boarder and get money, yay for entrepreneurship. To solve the problem of actual fraud (inflating numbers or re-selling the same load), get some investigators in the statehouse. Ta-da. If you want to be eco-friendly, just say that any income gained by recycling cans and bottles isn't subject to state taxation.

The only real issue I can see in the article is California is paying more than market value for aluminum.

When I was 12 there was an unattended recycling machine in the local supermarket's parking lot. It was huge, a 10 by 20 cage that looked like it would get loaded onto a flatbed truck. You fed the empties through a hole in a machine at the front. It weighed them, kicked the empties into the bin and then spat out change.

So it took me about two visits of turning in an afternoon's collection of aluminum to realize that the labor/reward ratios was way too low. That's when I started filling the cans with water and leaving them out to freeze over night before feeding them to the machine. That produced a much higher rate of return and except for the coldest parts of winter all the evidence would melt during the day. I made sure I never did it often enough to raise suspicions, maybe once or twice a month and I never told anyone about the scam or else every kid in the neighborhood would have tried to cash in and ruin it.

This doesn't really seem like a problem, if your goal is to encourage recycling. The redemption rate is right around 100%, which means the program is self-funding, other than a subsidy to actually run the recycling centers. Fraud is bad, and reasonable measures to stop it are probably a good idea, but it's not like the program is bleeding money.

What they're actually mad about is the fact that they budgeted the program as revenue stream, not a recycling incentive, under the assumption that not everyone would bother to redeem their bottles. Somehow I have trouble feeling bad that their program is only meeting its stated goal and isn't working as a hidden tax.

But seriously, as a resident in the Australian state with a great and effective recycling program (which is still largely rejected by other Australian states despite its popularity among my local population), surely California is a significantly major economy that it could insist on labelling laws which states 'this product was sold in California and its container is good for recycling in California or a state with equivalent laws' and that would be the end of the story. I'm pretty sure the state of Califonia's population is roughly the same as that of my entire continent.

profplump:This doesn't really seem like a problem, if your goal is to encourage recycling. The redemption rate is right around 100%, which means the program is self-funding, other than a subsidy to actually run the recycling centers. Fraud is bad, and reasonable measures to stop it are probably a good idea, but it's not like the program is bleeding money.

What they're actually mad about is the fact that they budgeted the program as revenue stream, not a recycling incentive, under the assumption that not everyone would bother to redeem their bottles. Somehow I have trouble feeling bad that their program is only meeting its stated goal and isn't working as a hidden tax.

Aussie_As:Salmon: It's a dime here in Canada but please take our Nickleback.

Salmon, that's farking brilliant.

But seriously, as a resident in the Australian state with a great and effective recycling program (which is still largely rejected by other Australian states despite its popularity among my local population), surely California is a significantly major economy that it could insist on labelling laws which states 'this product was sold in California and its container is good for recycling in California or a state with equivalent laws' and that would be the end of the story. I'm pretty sure the state of Califonia's population is roughly the same as that of my entire continent.

Have just actually bothered to research this and it turns out California's population is WAY bigger than Australia's. There's no excuse for administrative failures with this scheme.

Not surprised something like this happens. too much chance for easy money if you live near the border of a state in which you can get a fixed amount of money for item item you recycle with seeming no fool proof way to ensure it was sold with in the state.

This. Have a snowbird in the family. They would literally keep huge trash bags of crushed cans they accumulated while at their winter home, and bring them back to Michigan to cash in. Used to cover the cost of gas of the trip before gas prices went insane.

dameron:When I was 12 there was an unattended recycling machine in the local supermarket's parking lot. It was huge, a 10 by 20 cage that looked like it would get loaded onto a flatbed truck. You fed the empties through a hole in a machine at the front. It weighed them, kicked the empties into the bin and then spat out change.

So it took me about two visits of turning in an afternoon's collection of aluminum to realize that the labor/reward ratios was way too low. That's when I started filling the cans with water and leaving them out to freeze over night before feeding them to the machine. That produced a much higher rate of return and except for the coldest parts of winter all the evidence would melt during the day. I made sure I never did it often enough to raise suspicions, maybe once or twice a month and I never told anyone about the scam or else every kid in the neighborhood would have tried to cash in and ruin it.

And that is the entirety of my criminal enterprises.

/CSB, I know.

CSB, yes, except those machines around my neck of the woods actually crushed or shredded the cans, and thin aluminum is much easier to crush/shred than solid ice, so the machine would likely jam.

Thinking about it, it would probably be better shred the cans if the processing at the recycling was automated, since enterprising thieves might otherwise break into the storage bin and feed the crushed cans back through. Shredded can would make it to hazardous to attempt.

DrPainMD:Good. The government's been scamming the people for over 100 years. Scam it back if you can.

Yeah, the government is a separate evil entity. Make sure to steal from them as much as possible to resolve whatever imaginary perceived slight you've felt from them, all those taxpayers had too much money to blow anyway.